A record number of elderly people are completing living wills to guide end-of-life medical treatments – up from 47 percent in 2000 to 72 percent in 2010 – according to new research from the University of Michigan and the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

Community and home-based care are popular and cost Medicaid less money than nursing home care, but a new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society finds that seniors who left the nursing home for such services were 40 percent more likely to become hospitalized for a potentially preventable reason than those who stayed in the nursing home.

Cognitively impaired older adults released from the hospital are less likely to be rehospitalized within 30 days if they go to a nursing home than if they return to their own home or the home of a family member.

A new study focusing on how people with dementia become lost while driving, how missing drivers are found, and the role of public notification systems like Silver Alert in these discoveries suggests techniques that may help recover drivers with dementia and prevent potentially harmful incidents.